Chapter Text
In hindsight, it had been an awful idea from the very start. You could fill a whole list with reasons.
Moving in with your coworker? Check.
Moving in with your coworker whom you barely tolerate? Check.
Moving in with your coworker whom you barely tolerate, who is also a notorious neat freak? Check.
Moving in with your coworker whom you barely tolerate, who is also a notorious neat freak and fresh out of a breakup? Check.
Moving in with a tenor? Check.
So what, you may ask, had possessed an otherwise self-respecting Jyn Erso to do such a thing?
Enter one dream home: the top floors of an ivy-covered brownstone, two blocks away from the Kenobi Center for the Performing Arts, with restored original hardwood floors, brand new appliances, and a renovated furnace with AC. Even the landlords, an older couple who lived in the downstairs unit, seemed like actually nice people. A downright miracle.
There was only one issue, of course: the rent.
And it was with this thought bouncing around in her head like a DVD logo that Jyn walked into the rehearsal room and flopped into a folding chair.
"What's up?" Leia asked, looking up from where she was diligently blowing bubbles into her water bottle while simultaneously scrolling TikTok at warp speed.
"You know how I'm looking for a new place right now?" Jyn asked, letting her arms dangle dramatically over the back of the chair. Leia nodded, returning to her straw phonation. "I toured the perfect one yesterday. Like seriously perfect, Leia. It just came on the market, and you know how bad it is right now, someone's going to snap it up." She started listing off the many desirable attributes of 101B Rogue Street, and then dealt the death knell. "But the rent is almost double my budget."
In truth, she also didn't really need all that space, and those shiny new appliances would not get much use from her. But walking distance from the Kenobi Center! Right now she had to take the subway for forty minutes at midnight during performance weeks.
Leia made a sympathetic noise, which sounded very odd through the straw. At the back of the room, Kay poked his head out from where he was hanging his coat.
"Could you get a roommate?" he asked, somehow managing, in his own Kay way, to make a simple question sound like an interrogation.
She resisted the urge to just ignore him. "Probably. It's two bed, two bath. Two floors, actually. But I don't know anyone else who's looking and I don't want to find a rando."
"Hmm," Kay said, burying his head back in his jacket while he rummaged through the pockets. "I mean. If you're that desperate. Cassian's had trouble finding a new apartment. He's still been living with his ex for the last month."
And with those words, Kay launched it like a doomed ship: the most awful idea he, or anyone else, for that matter, might have ever had.
The same afternoon, Jyn observed the surrealist tableau in front of her: Cassian making a slow turn around the living room, absentmindedly wrapping the end of his (stupidly preppy) wool scarf around his wrist. She briefly debated whether she should call the landlord back upstairs to tell him they were backing out.
But then she saw the herringbone wood floor his (completely pretentious) loafers were pivoting on, and bit her tongue.
"It is really nice," he admitted, sticking his hands in his pockets. "Did Chirrut say they were going to get it cleaned next week?"
"If we take it," she clarified, internally rolling her eyes. Of course notorious neat freak Cassian Andor's first concern would be cleaning. Then again, she could see muddy bootprints on the floor from where a stampede of potential tenants had come through, so maybe he had a point. "They've had a couple offers already, but the way Chirrut said it made it sound like they got low-balled, so I think if we offer just like a hundred over, they'll take it. Seems like they like you well enough," she tacked on, only mildly grudgingly. A hundred extra per month was anathema to Jyn's budget, but with Cassian in on it, it was more than manageable. Funny how splitting rent worked.
He tilted his head, making mental calculations. It didn't take long — when you're stuck living with your ex, that probably weighs heavily into the equation. "Okay. If you want to take the primary lease, I can sublet while I look for another place. It shouldn't be hard for you to find another roommate, everyone at the Alliance would be frothing at the mouth to live this close to Kenobi. And I won't leave on short notice, we can draw it up in a contract or something."
Of course Cassian Andor's second concern would be contracts. Jyn was momentarily stymied. "I thought we were co-leasing for the year," she replied slowly.
He paused and his mouth drew up at the corner before he gave her a deadpan look. "I was under the impression you did not want to live with me for a whole year."
Jyn bristled: okay, she'd given him plenty of reason to believe that, but frankly, she still didn't really believe it had been quite that obvious. "We're fucking grown-ups. I can do it if you can," she said, crossing her arms. She didn't quite mean for it to sound like a challenge, but his answering smile was a touch too close to a smirk.
Well, she couldn't take it back now.
Except for the part where she absolutely, one hundred percent could have. She could've backed out at any point: before they went downstairs to find Chirrut, who sat them down at his kitchen table to email his realtor, smiling beatifically while they waited in awkward silence for his screen-reader software to load. Before the realtor sent them a pile of lease documents to sign the next day. Before they actually signed the lease documents, Cassian insisting that they fill them out together after diction class, crouched over his laptop on the floor. And just like that, with a move-in date of just over two weeks away, Jyn was now the proud tenant of possibly the most beautiful flat in the whole city, co-leasing with possibly the most annoying man in the city.
Except she was considering remedying that ranking with the way Bodhi was staring at her, drink straw actually falling out of his mouth in shock.
"You signed a lease with Andor because you were playing chicken," he said, gratingly slow.
Jyn rolled her eyes, picking at her nail polish. "I was not playing chicken," she snapped. "We agreed to it, and I'm not backing out just because we've had… problems in the past. You really think I'm that immature?"
"No," he hastened to reply, re-capturing the straw in his teeth. He took a too-long sip of strawberry matcha, clearly stalling for time. "Look, I'm just… surprised."
The worst part was the Bodhi's surprise wasn't even unreasonable: at this point, it was common knowledge around the Alliance for the Arts that the mezzo and the tenor in the Emerging Artist Conservatory did not like each other. Too common, in her opinion: musicians were horrific gossips, and Leia was wont to tell her violinist brother literally everything.
She didn't even know where or when or how it had started. Maybe it had been the very first rehearsal, only three months ago, when she'd rushed in late and he'd fixed her with that placidly disapproving look.
She'd been on the receiving end of that look a lot since then.
Or maybe, she could admit, it had been the first or sixth or thirtieth time her temper and/or impulsivity got the best of her. That masterclass in October…
"Okay, fine," she admitted. "It wasn't the most thought-out decision, alright? But we have so much space. The only things we have to share are the kitchen and the patio." The same evening after diction, Cassian had also made them hammer out a "cohabiting plan", which took three hours and resulted in the agreement that she would take the attic floor, keep it tidy enough to not warrant a health department visit, and clean up after herself when she used the kitchen. He said he was willing to handle the common areas, and she said she was more than happy to let him exert his need for control as long as he left her out of it.
He'd given her that look again before moving onto splitting utilities.
She then stewed through a very cranky forty minutes on the subway afterwards. At least he'd bought her coffee.
Bodhi tilted his head in commiseration. "I suppose that's fair enough. And it's only a year." His eyebrows remained in a worried scrunch, but then he visibly perked up. "You probably need help moving, then?" he asked, grabbing onto the prospect of a subject change with both hands.
"Oh, I guess," she replied. "Was just going to call movers today."
With a horrified look, he insisted he would get his infinite and inscrutable network of cousins on the case. For many reasons beside the obvious, it was honestly a real shame that Jyn couldn't have been flatmates with Bodhi instead. But he was still happily living in his childhood home with his mom and grandparents, where Jyn had been forcefully invited for every major holiday. Not that she really minded that, especially when it came with giant casserole dishes of Dadi's biryani to take home.
A flash of bright orange assaulted her peripheral vision, and Jyn looked up to see Luke Skywalker in his infamously tacky puffer jacket, herbal tea in hand. He was smiling with all the energy of a golden retriever. It was truly wild how he managed to be so happy all the time without caffeine.
"Hey, Bodes, Jyn," he greeted, nodding. "Ready for rehearsal?"
Bodhi checked the time on his phone. "Shoot, yeah, we should get going." He hefted his cello case from where he'd shoved it against the wall. "I'll text you when I hear from people. By the way, Luke, you up for moving furniture in a couple weeks?"
Jyn gave him a withering glare, but Luke just laughed. "Oh, yeah, you're moving in with Andor, huh?" She internally cussed out Leia and then took it back — she was too nice to disparage like that, even mentally. "Good luck with that. And sure!" He veritably beamed.
After they left, Jyn lingered at the table, nursing her now-cold coffee. She traced the cursive letters embossed in the porcelain, worrying at the bumps with her fingernail: Y-A-V-I-N-C-A-F-E. Despite her defensiveness, Jyn had to admit to worry. She didn't think she was a particularly terrible flatmate, but she'd cycled through a lot of them — for unrelated reasons, she reminded herself. But Cassian hadn't earned his Type-A-personality reputation without cause.
She thought about the floors. The view out of the attic window overlooking the neat rows of historic brownstones that lined the whole street. The gas fireplace with its plaster mouldings. The claw-foot tub and actual storage space in the bathroom. The blessed AC.
She thought about how her kyber ivy, currently barely clinging to life in her dark flat, would thrive in the south-facing window. Her mom's rock collection on the fireplace mantel. Long, hot baths to nurse her throat, stave off the panic. Her parade of medications in a locked drawer instead of a kitchen cabinet, staring her in the face every time she needed spices.
No, Bodhi's shock was not unwarranted, and his concerned eyebrows weren't either. They'd become friends in third year of undergrad, where he'd been witness to the disaster of her final year, the way she'd nearly crashed out of music, maybe life too. To his immense credit, he'd stood by her even when he'd landed a coveted seat with the Alliance Philharmonic, helped her write desperate master's program applications. When she'd finally received her MMus and successfully auditioned for the EAC, he'd burst into tears. Of course they were tears of joy, but sometimes Jyn thought there had been relief there, too.
Jyn went to her weekly piano lesson, spent some diligently fruitless time in the practice rooms, and then took the long ride home. She shut her door firmly, jammed on her noise-cancelling headphones, and started marking her scores to tune out the sounds of her flatmate and her girlfriend. That was, in truth, the reason she was leaving; she'd picked up on the not-so-subtle hints that they wanted to move in together.
Hardwood floors, she told herself, cranking the volume up. Air conditioning. Landlords that seem like human beings.
Cassian Andor.
She froze in the middle of making a breath mark and scowled. Then scowled harder — her pen had bled through the page.
A week later, Jyn was eating lunch, trying to shake off a truly foul mood. She'd gone up to her usual spot on the top floor of the Kenobi Center, at the alcove that overlooked the glass-enclosed ballet studios below. The corps was currently in the middle of company class, which gave off the vibe of visiting an extremely fit human aquarium.
Just over a month out from Christmas, Nutcracker season was in full swing, and the ballet division would be clogging up the Kenobi Center's main stage for the foreseeable future, making snide references to how much profit the production made every year all the while.
In the smaller Tano Theater, the orchestra and choir were about to start stage rehearsals of Messiah, where the EAC would join them in a couple weeks. Jyn had never liked early music, and after the debacle of last month, she fucking hated Messiah, but she could do it in her sleep at this point. Plus, it basically printed money during the holidays, so she was doing it at two churches in addition to the Alliance production this year. Frowning at the reminder, she consulted her phone calendar. There were definitely a couple overlapping rehearsals she had to talk to someone about.
To her left, the elevator doors dinged as someone stepped out. Jyn glanced automatically at the noise, then accidentally did a double-take as she realized she knew who it was.
Leia was striding towards her, looking balefully over her shoulder as she argued with the man walking behind her. To her deep resignation, Jyn realized she recognized the man, too.
The soprano turned back to face forward, saw Jyn, and turned a deep plum colour. Sighing, she brushed the sandwich crumbs off her shirt and waved. "Hey, Leia," she greeted. "Solo."
"Erso! Heard you're moving in with Andor next week," Han Solo said jovially, waggling his eyebrows. Today, his bizarrely curated principal-dancer-between-rehearsals look featured baggy sweatpants with the waist rolled down, a henley shirt with half the buttons open, a puffy vest on top, and Nike socks and slides that were both probably once white. Jyn privately thought it was pretty audacious to comment on anything when he couldn't decide whether he wanted his chest to be warm or cold.
Also: bloody fucking hell, did everyone at the Alliance know?
"Skiving off class, are we, Solo?" she asked instead, gesturing to the studios below.
He raised his hands and laughed. "I have a fitting in ten, jeez! You short people are spicy today." Han glanced at Leia, who had folded her arms, looking thoroughly unimpressed. "Closer to hell, huh, your highness?" She glared.
Jyn decided it was about time to go practice. On a good day, Han and Leia's will-they-won't-they was pretty entertaining, but she was in no mood for it now. Waving as she departed the pair, who had already started bickering again, she made her way downstairs to the practice rooms.
After spreading out her scores on top of the piano, she plonked down on the bench, ready to start warmups. Her rep load was actually manageable at the moment, which was a welcome surprise for the holidays. I should probably do a bit of Messiah, she thought resignedly, shuffling the Handel score to the top of her pile.
She was slowly working her way through Act 3 of Der Rosenkavalier; when they'd drawn up her EAC contract, the Alliance had offered her the opportunity to perform Octavian in the spring mainstage production. In the new year, the EAC was also doing a number of outreach performances at local schools, where she was going to do the classic Carmen Habanera aria and "Un soave non so che" from La Cenerentola with (who fucking else) Cassian.
She dragged her hand down her face. A faint silver lining: maybe their living situation would facilitate more duet practice.
The memory, which she had successfully managed to push away during lunch, hit her like an anvil falling out of the sky.
After their weekly group class in the morning, their artistic director had asked her and Cassian to stay behind.
"We've decided our masterclass lineups for the spring," Draven said, his face locked in its usual expression of complete and utter distaste. Jyn had learned that it did not reflect his mood in the slightest, which made attempting to read his face utterly useless. "There's just one thing we wanted to run by you first. We thought you two could do 'Un soave' when Mon and Kleya are here in April, but given the last experience, I wanted to check in."
Jyn could've melted through the floor. "Yeah, of course," she mumbled, staring at her beat-up Air Forces, and repeated herself from a week ago, thinking of her and Cassian standing in the living room. "We're adults. I may have not behaved like one last time, but I'll make sure to do better." She wished it didn't sound so robotic. She was fucking tired of apologizing.
Her extended campaign of contrition had clearly achieved its purpose, though, because Draven just waved his hand dismissively. "Andor, what about you?"
Cassian just nodded, his face infuriatingly calm.
Jyn internally grumbled at the memory of his blank expression as she worked her way through her arpeggios. She had to admit she wasn't incredibly chuffed to have to do a duet for Mon Mothma and Kleya Marki, the two legendary sopranos who were coming to play the Marschallin and Sophie in Der Rosenkavalier. It felt like the last time she'd gotten the chance to do a solo aria was in grad school. But Mon and Kleya were both noted stage partners, and given that Jyn would have to collaborate with them in various duets and trios during the opera, it did make sense.
She was also not incredibly chuffed about her duet partner. But that was another issue entirely, and one she was determinedly attempting to get over.
Sighing, she cracked open the well-worn yellow book sitting atop her pile and placed it on the music stand. Time for motherfucking Handel.
Jyn was pretty adept at lying to herself, but even she couldn't quite make herself believe this one. She did know where it had started. And when, and why, and how, and all of those other interrogatives.
Sure, Cassian had always chafed against her lateness, her impulsivity, her general chaos, and her temper was quick to flare in response. But for a month or so at the beginning, they hadn't just managed civility, they'd been friendly. They ribbed each other and snarked at group classes and over drinks, and made fun of each other's accents during diction. They'd rehearsed for their first masterclass together for hours, both nervous and determined to perform well.
Then.
Jyn honestly wasn't sure if she'd even spoken to him once in the weeks after. Then Draven had scheduled the most uncomfortable, embarrassing meeting of her life, informing her of several things, including the bare and ugly fact that her grudge was affecting "group cohesion".
So she'd laid off the cold shoulder treatment. But for all his grumpy attitude and various other faults, Draven was a good director, and he'd been right. Their dynamic had never gone back to the way it was.
Sure, the rivalry had floated back, an easy well to draw from. But Jyn found herself locked in a new cycle, now: every challenge and bit of banter delivered thoughtlessly and then regretted immediately the second she looked up and saw the expression in his eyes. And yet they'd never managed to learn another way to communicate.
The reason lay deep in her gut like a rock, pulling at her, weighing her down. It had been, in every conceivable way, her fault, and the shame of it all was an unfamiliar feeling. After the cock-up of her fourth year, scraping through her master's, she was lucky to be here. And her artistic director had to talk to her about her professionalism, of all things.
She'd always felt messy, been messy. Her life had been a series of steadily rising hopes marred by complete upsets, one after the other. She was used to being praised for her musicality, her passion — subjective and vague things.
Cassian was praised for his technique, his precision.
And there it was: the humiliating truth underlying it all, the bedrock foundation. Over the last month, when he gave her that look, it wasn't just an annoyance anymore, but an indictment. His wool scarf and shiny loafers next to her beat-up sneakers, her hands chapped from the cold because she was always forgetting her gloves.
His careful polish next to her fuck-ups, her perpetual inadequacy.
But Jyn couldn't afford to feel this way. Her EAC contract would be finished in a year and a half, and then they'd probably be off to opposite sides of the globe. She couldn't let a grudge wreck her career, and she couldn't let her own self-esteem do it, either.
That was the part she had to remember above all else, above the petty squabbles and personality conflicts. She'd been astonishingly lucky to get where she was, especially with her sullied history of training — the Alliance for the Arts EAC was a gem among young artist programs. It paid exceptionally well, offered great performance opportunities, and, most shockingly, actually led to careers more often than not. She had to focus on her development, on filming audition tapes, on building her resume and credits.
She had to make decisions. The choices floated by each day like emails in her inbox, opportunities posted on YAPtracker.com and auditions being held by a friend-of-a-friend-of-a-friend. Pedagogy certificates and PhD programs and directing opportunities. The safer alternatives to the living-out-of-a-suitcase dream of principal roles. She had to apply. She had to network. She had to fucking practice.
She had to spare some time to think about the fear living in the back of her mind: whether this dream she was clinging onto with sheer momentum was still hers, or just the ghost of a previous girl's.
Move-in day caught up to Jyn faster than she thought it would, and she had to spend her last night in her flat frantically stuffing clothes in boxes before catching a few hours of sleep. Thus, when Bodhi and his pack of relatives knocked on the door bright and early, she was pretty much only capable of greeting them in a blurry haze before letting them ferry her things into some uncle's borrowed truck. By the time they'd all strapped their seatbelts, she had regained consciousness enough to at least insist on buying everyone coffee at the drive-through.
Luke and (to her surprise) Leia were waiting at 101B Rogue St when they pulled up. Luke's face was in its typical expression of utmost cheer and Leia was wearing a voluminous scarf and holding a ginormous tumbler of tea. She was resting her voice for a children's theater show she was volunteering for that weekend. Chirrut stood on the sidewalk chatting with them while his husband, Baze, stood silently beside him, eyeing Jyn's boxes as though he was mentally measuring them against the doorways.
Shockingly, Cassian hadn't arrived yet, so Jyn felt it was justifiable to use this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to claim her preferred cabinets and closets.
After the boxes came inside and Bodhi's cousins departed, he remained behind, putting dishes away with Luke while Leia directed. In the attic, Jyn placed her kyber ivy on the windowsill, hung up her crumpled clothes, and made her new bed, occasionally catching the soprano's complaints that the boys had no idea how to organize.
When she had installed the child lock on her bathroom drawer, she came downstairs to the trio arguing over what food to order for lunch.
"Oh, good, you're here," Leia said perfunctorily, scrolling through her delivery app. "I can't believe you missed these idiots trying to put your plates on the top shelf."
"The top shelf was the shortest in height—" Luke started to protest.
"She's five foot two, talk about short!" Leia yelled in response, then touched her throat regretfully. She rolled her eyes at Jyn. "These fucking giants will never understand."
Jyn looked over to the fireplace and noticed that Bodhi had already unpacked her mom's rocks, clustering them on the left side of the mantelpiece. Her heart rose into her throat.
"Jyn!" Chirrut called from downstairs. "I believe Cassian is here."
Pushing away the emotion, she started for the staircase. "Hold on ordering until I'm back."
When she arrived on the empty curb, she had only just turned back to ask Chirrut what the fuck he was talking about before an old station wagon turned the corner. Damn, that's almost creepy, she mused, and noted the number of large guys who started pouring out with some concern.
It turned out the gun show was here for one reason, which they immediately started working on in a whirl of organized chaos: a beautiful wooden upright piano that they carefully carried into the house while Baze trailed after them, looking mildly alarmed.
"Hi," Jyn finally said to Cassian once the piano had been safely deposited in his bedroom.
He raked a hand through his hair. "Hey." His face was flushed from the exertion. "Oh, right — Brasso, Melshi, Kes. Jyn," he said, waving his hand between her and the guys. "And you know Kay, obviously." The baritone nodded impassively.
"Got the whole EAC gang here today," Jyn said after flailing around for a reply. "Could do a quartet."
"Absolutely not," Kay sniffed, leaving the room.
Back in the main area, there were now approximately way too many people, all crowded around Leia as she resignedly took lunch orders. Jyn added hers, patting the other woman's shoulder in commiseration, and nearly had her eye taken out by a pot handle as she turned around.
"Sorry!" a woman with dark curly hair yelped, setting down the box crammed with kitchen equipment. "You okay?" Jyn nodded, and she smiled in relief. She had really pretty brown eyes. "You must be Jyn! I'm Bix."
A memory flashed to the surface like gold in a pan: a whispered conversation she'd accidentally eavesdropped on in rehearsal last month; Kay's interrogatory questions, the painful twist of Cassian's mouth. Bix. Oh Christ, the ex. "Oh," she said, fighting not to let her surprise show. "Nice to meet you."
If they'd managed to still live together while he found a place, and she was helping him move in, the breakup had to have been amicable enough. Jyn's stomach still swooped unpleasantly, like the expectation of awkwardness was enough to rile her up.
Of course he manages to stay on good terms with his exes, she thought instead. As she watched Bix put pots away, she watched the light glint off her shiny curls and considered that Cassian might be an idiot. It was a comforting thought.
With so many hands to help, his boxes were unpacked in record time, though the grimace he quickly hid when he looked in the closet suggested that Cassian would be doing some reorganizing when everyone left. Despite her internal eye-roll at his neuroticism, Jyn sympathized; not everyone could have Leia running the show.
A very hassled-looking delivery driver arrived with their food, and Jyn made a belated realization.
"Wait," she said, looking at the living room. "You don't have a couch?"
Cassian paused from where he was studying the empty right side of the mantel, and turned around like he hadn't noticed all the unoccupied space behind him. "No, all our furniture—" he cut himself off swiftly with only the tiniest glance at Bix. "No. Diablos, okay. I assume you don't, either."
"Just used my roommate's before," Jyn muttered, and stared at the beautiful herringbone hardwood like seating might spawn out of nowhere.
They all ended up eating on the floor, a casual circle in front of the fireplace that Kes and his girlfriend Shara had magically managed to turn on. It reminded Jyn of kindergarten.
"You want to order furniture together later?" Cassian asked her in an undertone, leaning over into her space. Jyn tried not to bristle at the perceived undertone. There wasn't even any undertone to perceive.
"Yeah, sure," she said. "Express delivery," which pulled a halfhearted chuckle out of him. Christ, that wasn't even a good joke.
It hit her then, properly, a semi-truck barrelling into her head: she was going to be living with him for the next year. Forget animosity — their biggest problem was going to be complete and unadulterated awkwardness.
Across the circle, Jyn caught Kay's eye. He was looking at them, head tilted, perpetually critical. Maybe, underneath the cold exterior, a smudge regretful.
She glared right back. Fucking tosser. It had been his stupid, awful idea, and now they were the ones who were going to have to reap the consequences of it.
Their first few weeks "cohabiting", as Cassian kept relentlessly putting it, was actually extremely uneventful, mostly due to the fact that they immediately got pulled into a dozen rehearsals a day. Jyn was a bit miffed about the fact that the second she moved within walking distance from the Kenobi Center, she had to start transiting all over the city to make it to various churches and theaters.
Aside from his things in the cabinets, his perpetually locked door, Jyn felt like she barely saw any evidence of Cassian's existence. Their walls were blank. The kitchen was pristine, the countertops seemingly wiped down every night. Jyn was doing yoga in the living room (the only benefit of their lack of furniture) a few days in when she looked up in a side angle pose and realized that the right half of the mantel that Bodhi had left empty remained that way.
It seemed that, much like herself, Cassian lived lightly in his own home.
Slowly, she began to notice the footprints.
The blender that lived in a cupboard took up permanent residence on the counter.
Salsas labeled with masking tape began to pile up in neat rows of deli containers in the fridge.
The smell of bread that lingered in the kitchen late at night.
One of the house's greatest attributes was that it was extremely well-soundproofed. Out of respect for Chirrut and what Jyn suspected was a very enhanced sense of hearing, she still did most of her serious practice in the Kenobi practice rooms. Cassian, it seemed, had also picked up on this and followed suit. But she still heard it sometimes in the evening, wafting up through the vents: the soft chords of piano music or a hummed tune. Sometimes, if she concentrated, she could even identify the aria.
It was a bit like living with a ghost.
Thus, it almost seemed like a shock when, on her first blissfully free Sunday morning in what felt like forever, Jyn woke up late to the sound of frying oil. It was an even bigger shock when she padded downstairs in her pyjamas, still half-asleep, and found the kitchen both lit up with sunlight and containing Cassian Andor.
She put voice to her thoughts before he got the chance to turn around and notice her just standing there like a creep. "Feel like I haven't seen you for a month," she groaned, rubbing her eyes.
He whirled around. He was also in his pyjamas, holding a spatula like it was a weapon. "Oh, hey. When did you get in last night?"
"Late," she replied grumpily. "Leia wanted to do drinks, you'll never guess who 'randomly' showed up."
Cassian rolled his eyes. "Kay and I have a bet on when they'll finally get together." He paused. "Oh, um — furniture store called me. There's been another delay on the couch. We shouldn't expect it until after Christmas."
Tipping her head back, Jyn let the groan rip through her teeth until it sounded like a growl. "Bloody hell. Do we just want to cancel it?" The couch that they'd spent an embarrassing amount of time deciding on had already been placed on back-order twice.
"I don't think we can, it's already shipped. Stuck in a warehouse in butt-fuck nowhere," he said, staring down at his pan on the stove. Is that the first time he's ever sworn? What a rebel.
She crept closer. "What are you making?"
"Chilaquiles," he answered, cracking an egg into the pan. He glanced up at her, and a jolt of electricity shot through Jyn as she took in the bed-mussed state of his hair for the first time. His sleep shirt, she noticed, was a Fall Out Boy tour tee. Forget animosity, forget awkwardness, this was just plain weird. "I haven't been able to cook much this week, all my tortillas went stale. Do you want some? I'll just do a couple extra eggs."
She was so taken aback (and fine, also hungry) that she answered automatically. "Oh. Sure. Thanks, that's, ah, really nice of you."
"It's no problem," he answered, and Jyn busied herself with getting plates and cutlery, laying them out on the kitchen table. Mercifully, the table and chairs they had ordered had arrived quickly, so there was at least somewhere to sit (and gaze upon the empty expanse of the rest of the flat).
It wasn't like she thought his cooking would be bad or anything, but when Jyn took a bite, her eyes widened. "Oh my God," she said, unable to keep the surprise out of her voice. "This is actually really good."
"Were you expecting it not to be?" Cassian asked, and when she looked up, there was a little smile on his face.
"Oh, shut up." She rolled her eyes, but her hand was shoveling chilaquiles in her mouth of its own accord. Jyn admittedly didn't eat very well on a regular basis. "I didn't know you cooked."
Cassian shrugged, and said something about the holiday performance schedule messing up his meal planning, and then, just like that, they were having the first casual conversation they'd had in over a month. They flitted from topic to topic: the terribly long rehearsals over the last few weeks, the church choirs they were soloing for this season, according attempts at proselytization they'd faced, the constant delays on the subway that came with winter, terrible reality TV they'd been watching recently, the rumour that the Alliance Nutcracker's Sugar Plum Fairy had cheated on her husband with the Cavalier.
"Do you have any holiday plans? After our last Messiah," Jyn asked after a brief silence, a bit tentative. She didn't know anything about Cassian's family. Hadn't really bothered to find out, if she was being honest.
There was a slightly pregnant pause, and she immediately regretted asking. But Cassian just shrugged, dragging his fork across his empty plate. "I think I'm doing Christmas Mass with Bix's family," he said slowly. "But that's it. What about you?"
Okay, well, maybe the breakup had been amicable, but this seemed a bit far. Jyn was more preoccupied at the moment with how to explain her own sad state of holiday affairs. "Er, Bodhi's family usually has me round for dinner, but that's it. Are your folks, like, far?"
His gaze fixed on the wall in front of him, and Jyn knew she'd really stepped in it. "No," he replied. "They've, uh, been gone for a while now."
"Oh," she blurted. She aimed for something trite that she knew she would have hated hearing — I'm sorry, or that must be hard this time of year — but what came out was totally unexpected. "Mine too."
Cassian's eyes snapped to hers. In the morning sunlight filtering through the kitchen window, they were dark, bisected by a thin line of amber-coloured light. "Oh," he breathed, barely more than a whisper, and with that reflection, they just stared at each other. Two people who didn't realize they had the worst in common.
The silence dragged on, unsettling and oddly comfortable, until Cassian started, reaching for their plates. "Here, let me take these."
He deposited them in the sink, and under the cover of the running faucet, Jyn took a deep, shaky breath.
The next few weeks of the year went largely the same each day: the flat mostly uninhabited, Jyn sometimes catching the smell of cooking or hearing faint piano wafting up from below. The living room floor remained empty but fastidiously vacuumed. She left the cookies a grandma at St. Peter's Anglican had given her on the counter, and they steadily disappeared over the next few days.
Once every few days, she came downstairs to Cassian in the kitchen, making something that invariably smelled delicious. More often than not, he fixed her a plate. After a particularly prolonged rehearsal, she ordered pizza and ate it on the floor with him, Leia, Kay, and some of the chorus members.
Bolstered by receiving adequate light for the first time ever, Jyn's kyber ivy had started to grow, creeping up the stake she attached to the window. She popped Vitamin C to stave off colds and took baths so long her whole hands pruned. She practiced Messiah until she was ready to drag Handel from his grave and kill him again.
She looked at her calendar and dread lined the pit of her stomach. Every year, the five days from December 26-31 stared her down, a black void she fell into and crawled out of, like clockwork.
Bodhi's family, of course, had roped her into all-day festivities on Christmas, but the orphans always seemed to be forgotten until New Year's. Not that she blamed anyone for it. There was a jagged canyon in her calendar, her chest, that no one could fill.
No time to think about it now.
Performance week rolled around at the Alliance. Jyn dragged out her old standard gown from its garment bag at the back of the closet and chucked it in the suitcase of items she'd be leaving at the Tano Theater until Christmas Eve.
In the foyer, Cassian was preparing his own bag. "Oh, hey," he greeted as she came down the stairs. "Want to walk together?"
"Sure," she answered, pulling on her coat. She briefly debated searching for her gloves and gave up on the idea, studying her nails. She'd need to book a manicure before opening night.
Despite their cohabitation and proximity to the Kenobi Center, Jyn and Cassian had never actually done the five-minute walk together, which really highlighted the mess that was their respective schedules right now. Rogue Street was a quiet boulevard lined with willow trees, their dead fronds encrusted in snow.
"Not to stress you out before dress rehearsal," he said suddenly, breath clouding in the air, "but in the new year we should probably start running 'Un soave', right?"
She wrinkled her nose. "Yeah, definitely. Before it gets super busy in the spring."
They lapsed into silence, punctuated only by the sound of wind brushing snow from the treetops.
"Rosenkavalier with Mon Mothma and Kleya Marki," Cassian mused out of nowhere. "That must be pretty exciting."
"Yeah," Jyn replied shortly, not knowing how else to respond. "Big opportunity." The luckiest break she might have ever gotten. A knot of anxiety, new and wholly surprising, started to twist in her stomach, and she pushed it down with a prickle of irritation directed at him. "Why do you bring it up?"
Cassian gave her a long look — not his classic look of disappointed annoyance that she was very used to, but a different thing altogether, searching and taciturn. "No reason."
They alighted on the main thoroughfare, where the Kenobi Center lay across the street, and she redirected her attention to not getting hit by a dozen cars. But that little curl of nervousness stayed firm in Jyn's gut, tangling and blooming, and they had a horrifically bad dress rehearsal.
"Just means a better performance run," Bodhi said afterwards, clapping her on the shoulder; an old, tired adage. She tried to smile at him as he hefted his cello case and departed, but she felt fundamentally unsettled.
Later that night, lying in bed, she tried to parse through it, unknotting each mental string. The sudden comment. The look. The way his eyes had shifted upwards after, reflecting steel-gray off the sky.
When it hit her, she sat bolt upright. There's no bloody way…
No. Shut it down. It was simply impossible.
If Cassian Andor had anyone to be jealous of, it certainly wasn't her.
After a bad experience with over-booking in her first year of grad school that left her completely unable to speak, Jyn managed her performance runs carefully. Lots of vocal rest, yoga, long baths, and plenty of time to push away the dread, over and over again, shoving it into the box that would inevitably pop back open.
Okay, it wasn't like she normally had an anxiety problem. And she certainly didn't have any stage fear problems. But the empty horizon of her future and the shattered glass of her past always seemed to magnify in the long, quiet blocks of time she scheduled on performance days. It was truly a double-edged sword: unable to practice or book gigs for fear of injuring her vocal folds, unable to relax for fear of having to sit with her thoughts. Well, only one of those fears affected her paycheck, so it was an easy choice.
She tried a new lavender-scented bath bomb. She listened to recordings of Mon Mothma's legendary Rosenkavalier performance with the Chandrila Opera Company, tapping her foot on the edge of the tub in time. She found a way to position the shower curtain just so, blocking her view of the bathroom cabinet.
Halfway through the week, she was doing yoga in the living room when the door opened, ushering in a blast of cold wind. Still in downward dog, she turned her head as Cassian came upstairs, his coat hiked up around his ears.
"Hey," she called out. "Cold out?"
He visibly shivered. "Brutal. Probably a good idea to dress extra warm tonight," he warned, carefully unwrapping two layers of scarves.
"Thanks for the warning," she said, dropping into cobra and noting the Yavin Cafe to-go cup in his hand. "What were you doing at Kenobi? Thought our call time was five."
Carefully hanging up his coat, he sat down on the living room floor and took a sip of his tea. "Extra rehearsal with Ushos," he explained, "and then I got the recording of our opening night and went through it."
Jyn nodded. Ushos was the EAC vocal coach, a collaborative pianist who spoke six languages and was merciless in diction for all of them. "Cool," she said finally after hunting around for a response. There was an insistent tug in her chest that wasn't difficult to identify the source of: this was Cassian at his most dedicated, his most fixated. His technique and work evident, always dangling like a lure, leagues ahead of her. Even if she didn't hate Handel, she would have never analyzed a three-hour-long recording. She couldn't stomach listening to herself, even to improve.
The high points of colour in his cheeks were starting to recede in the glow of the fireplace. "Um," Cassian said, looking down at his jeans, "I did notice one thing for you. If you're willing."
The awkward timbre of his voice was unmistakable, his fingers twisting in his posh wool sweater. Jyn fought down her irritation, her embarrassment. Singers gave each other notes all the time. It was constructive. Yet another normal thing she'd ruined between them. "Yeah, I'd love to hear it." It came out a bit too wooden, and she winced.
He traced a seam in the floor with his fingernail. "When you're doing 'O thou that tellest'," he said, referencing one of her arias, "and you get to the melisma on 'mountain', I feel like you need to grow more on that really long sustained note, and just hold the energy more right to the end. Otherwise it kind of seems like you're running out of steam, even though I know you're obviously not."
Jyn considered the passage he was talking about, humming it under her breath. "Huh," she breathed, eyebrows automatically coming together as she thought about it. "That makes a lot of sense. It's easy to get bogged down in that weird pause, I think. Thanks." She shook her head and came out of her pose, sitting in padmasana. "I hate early music."
The chuckle that followed was almost conspiratorial. "Honestly," he admitted, "me too. The only reason I do so much of it is that a lot of the Spanish composers seem to be from the Renaissance. But I really don't like Baroque."
"There's also a lot in the late Romantic," she pointed. "Like de Falla and Granados and them. That's my favourite period."
He nodded. "I auditioned with 'Jota' by de Falla, yeah. I always liked Romantic too. My grad program did a Spanish production of Carmen." He glanced up, and Jyn was momentarily stymied by his smile. When was the last time she'd seen it, open and trusting, no hint of irony? "Draven talked about trying to put on Florencia en el Amazonas next year or the year after."
"That's the one that the Coruscanti Opera commissioned, right? That would be pretty cool," she said, and considered the man sitting in front of her. Their conversation over chilaquiles, how little she really knew about him. "Hey, what's your favourite opera, anyway?"
Cassian tilted his head toward her in an oddly endearing gesture. "La Fille du Régiment."
The laugh punched right out of her chest. "Oh my God, 'Ah! mes amis'? Of course your favourite is the one where your character is the greatest and gets the best song and does absolutely nothing wrong," she snarked, rolling her eyes.
"Hey, it's funny," he protested. "And don't forget 'Chacun le sait', that one's iconic. Best soprano aria ever. What's your favourite then, Carmen?"
She propped her chin on her fist. Like so many of her conversations, this one had wheeled straight into something unexpected and depressing. "Dialogues des Carmélites," she said slowly. "And Barber of Seville."
Cassian's eyebrows popped upwards. "Those are like polar opposites."
Jyn's eyes drifted away, up towards the fireplace. The flames in the grate reflected harsh on her eyes as her gaze rested on the mantel. Basalt, eclogite, fluorite, obsidian, peridotite, a huge chunk of smoky quartz. "Barber was my mom's favourite." She paused, unsure if she should just leave it there. She'd already managed to tank a perfectly good conversation. But there was an ache in her chest that pulled so hard at her throat, she was a little worried it was going to affect her singing tonight. "And Dialogues… there's that scene at the end. Where all the nuns are singing and going to the guillotine, and one after another their voices just cut out as they get executed, right? And then Blanche comes back at the end to die with them. It's like…" she blushed, fidgeting in her lap. "Like they go on and on the whole opera about martyrdom, and Blanche is scared and then she runs away. But when she comes back, there's that whole little reunion scene, and then it almost doesn't really even feel like she's doing it for God, in the end. It's more like it's the only way left to show how much she loves them."
She risked a glance back at him. Cassian wasn't smiling anymore, but there was none of the expected confusion or pity or derision in his expression. In the late afternoon sun filtering through the window, the world outside the flat slowed to a syrupy crawl, sticky and aching like the blood slipping through Jyn's rapidly-beating heart.
In a plane just behind Cassian, Jyn could almost see her future yawning its gaping maw, uncertain and perilous. The five days after Christmas, her annual plunge. Her EAC contract spooling away in a slow but steady stream. The blissful apathy of fourth year, always beckoning, like white tablets in an orange tube.
"I should go get ready," she said, jumping to her feet. "For tonight." She rolled up her yoga mat in a rush.
"Right, me too," Cassian said. But as she nearly ran to the stairs, she glanced back for a moment and saw him still there, lingering on the floor, in the middle of their empty room.
Just as Bodhi predicted, performance week finished without a hitch.
Late on Christmas Eve, Jyn took her final bow, smiling prettily at the audience as she silently cheered never having to perform this stupid piece again (well, until next year). Beside her, Leia's eyes looked huge in their glittery black liner. Kay was managing something close to a smile. Cassian looked so cool and collected in his tux that it was downright unfair.
Because both women were at least half a foot shorter than the men, they'd been put up on a platform, which both of them absolutely hated. The second the curtain closed, Leia jumped down on the stage with such force her heels smacked on the wood. From the violinist section behind them, Jyn could hear Luke laugh.
"Done for the year!" the soprano crowed. "We have to go out. Luke!" she called. "Let's go somewhere, start grabbing people."
Jyn glanced at Cassian, who suddenly looked bone-tired, his stage presence completely gone. "I'm sitting this one out, sorry."
"Me too," Jyn added automatically, then questioned why she'd said it.
But it was creeping up on her: the adrenaline dump, the emptiness in her chest. Her aching feet and the little scrape in her throat. It would be a bad night tonight. She thought about her bathroom drawer.
When she had wiped off her makeup and gathered her things, Cassian was standing at the stage door in his dumb wool coat and scarf, idly scrolling through his phone. "Why are you still here?" Jyn blurted out.
He looked up. His hair was falling out of its gel, a curl flopping over his forehead. "It's late," he replied, like it was the most obvious thing in the world. "Shouldn't walk alone."
"I do it all the time," she muttered, but she couldn't put any venom in it.
When they'd arrived back, Chirrut and Baze were clearly hosting some kind of holiday party, the sounds of laughter and clinking cutlery drifting up through the vents. Jyn showered and stared at her bathroom cabinet for far too long before she summoned the willpower to go downstairs to the kitchen, hollow and worn. She slumped at the table.
Christmas Eve, and here she was, sitting alone in her kitchen. Another year spent desperate and scrambling. The Alliance had gifted her comp tickets and she hadn't had anyone to give them to.
The five days loomed, just over the horizon.
Without warning, Cassian flipped on the light and gasped. "Puta madre, you scared the living hell out of me. Why are you just sitting in the dark?"
Jyn looked down at her hands on the table, and to her abject horror, she started to feel her soft palate rise, her vision going watery.
"Oh my God," he said, and then started mumbling under his breath as he flailed around for a box of tissues. "Joder, one second, shit, sorry." It nearly made Jyn break into a laugh. Finally, he held out a tissue, sliding into the other seat at the table. "What's going on?"
Jyn blew her nose, trying to stamp down the rising wave of humiliation. "What do you usually do during the break?" The last six years, she'd spent whole days in bed under the covers, counting each inhale and exhale in patterns. Barely eating, barely sleeping, floating in her body like a wraith. Come New Year's Eve, she'd gotten into a habit of dragging herself upright, putting on her makeup, going out regardless of an invite. Finding someone to plaster herself to at midnight. The only circuit breaker she knew, ready and prepped for the year ahead.
"Um," Cassian said eloquently, fidgeting in his lap, "Bix would always be doing parties, movies, making us go out to look at the lights. That kind of thing. To distract me."
She looked up. His hair was damp, his eyes crowned in dark bruises. It seemed obvious, now, though she hadn't noticed: not a good time of year for him either. Especially this year. "How long were you two together?"
He paused, mouth twisting. "We've been friends since high school. We got together when I started my master's."
Jyn nodded, biting back the obvious follow-up question. She started shredding the tissue into pieces, the nervous energy tingling in her fingers.
"We broke up," Cassian started, and then stopped. He sighed, and handed her another tissue. "Bix has had… a difficult life. She's had a lot of choices taken from her." He raked a hand through his hair. "I guess I helped her through it, and she realized," he trailed off. "I don't know how to phrase it. I don't want to make her sound like a bad person. She realized she didn't have a lot of, um, autonomy. Didn't know if the decisions she made were, you know, her own. So she kind of wanted to start over. Figure out who she is."
Jyn thought of the bright woman with her beautiful dark eyes and her heart ached a bit in commiseration. And something faintly envious. Sometimes she wished she could run away and start fresh. But the glaring issue always asserted itself quickly: if she cut herself off from opera and regretted it, there was no way to go back.
"She's going to go to trade school," Cassian continued. "I think…" he fell into silence again, then sighed. "I don't really know what I'm going to do this year. Tomorrow feels fine, honestly — you know, Mass and spending time with her family and all that. But I just look at the next five days and…"
It was funny; faintly telepathic, the way Jyn had been thinking the same thing for weeks.
Above them, the kitchen light illuminated the table in a golden halo, cut through by their shadows. An interrogation lamp, a spotlight. "We can do stuff," she uttered without thinking, and a whole-body cringe overtook her. Fucking kill me now, she thought fervently. "I mean, like, if you want. You don't have to. I just thought… Jesus Christ, never mind." The tears were rising up again, utterly embarrassing. Her heart was pounding in her ears. She got up swiftly from the table, an echo of just a few days prior. Ready to make her escape.
His hand was on her arm.
Jyn looked back through blurry vision.
Cassian's eyes were cast in shadow. His fingers slowly wrapped around her wrist. "That sounds nice," he said, quiet and painfully earnest.
She blinked, and felt the tear catch on her eyelashes. "Okay."